Alleged arms dealer talks on Moscow radio

March 01, 2002|By Robyn Dixon. Special to the Tribune. Robyn Dixon is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune newspaper.

MOSCOW — Victor Bout, the Russian businessman accused of illegally trading arms with the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists, stopped by a Moscow radio station Thursday for a live, 37-minute interview, but Russian law-enforcement officials made no move to arrest him.

Bout offered the rare interview to the Echo of Moscow station, the city's only liberal radio outlet. After denying all involvement in illegal arms trafficking, he walked out of the station and disappeared onto the streets of Moscow.

"What should I be afraid of?" Bout said on air. "I haven't done anything in my life to worry about so that I would need to hide and run away."

U.S. and Belgian officials had suspected Bout was in Russia, but just hours before the interview Interpol's Moscow bureau said the chances he was in the city were minuscule.

Bout is wanted by Belgian authorities on a money-laundering charge; United Nations reports accuse him of illegal arms trading in Africa.

Bout said he is willing to cooperate with Russian Interior Ministry police, but a ministry spokesman said late Thursday that police weren't seeking to arrest Bout.

The unofficial Russian view is that the alleged link between Bout and Al Qaeda has not been proved and that the UN reports provide no basis for prosecution.

Earlier in the week, Interpol's Russia bureau sent international evidence against Bout to the Russian prosecutor general's office, which will make a decision on whether to open a criminal case and arrest him.

"It is very difficult to say what will eventually happen to Bout in Russia, whether he will be detained or not. At this stage, the Bout story is still full of gaps and question marks," Interpol bureau spokesman Igor Tsirulnikov said.

In the interview Thursday, Bout told Echo of Moscow that he had been in the transportation business since 1992 and that it was his primary business.

"I deal exclusively with air transportation, and I have never been involved in arms trade," he said.

He said the claims that he supplied Osama bin Laden with weapons, including nuclear weapons components, were like something out of a Hollywood thriller.